GPT-4o vs Grok 3 Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

Grok 3 Mini is significantly cheaper at $0.30/$0.50 per million tokens vs $2.50/$10.00. GPT-4o is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1265 vs 1200. GPT-4o ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1260 vs 1220.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-4oGrok 3 Mini
ProviderOpenAIxAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$2.50$0.300
Output Price / 1M tokens$10.00$0.500
Context Window128K128K
Max Output Tokens16,38416,384
Arena ELO1,2601,220
Coding ELO1,2651,200
TTFT (ms)230180
Tokens/sec95110
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionYesNo
When to Use GPT-4o

Choose GPT-4o when you need: fast response times, strong multimodal capabilities, code execution support. It excels at general-purpose, multimodal, function-calling tasks.

Strengths:

  • Fast response times
  • Strong multimodal capabilities
  • Code execution support

Best for:

general-purposemultimodalfunction-calling
When to Use Grok 3 Mini

Choose Grok 3 Mini when you need: very affordable pricing, fast response times, good for simple tasks, reasoning capabilities at low cost. It excels at chatbots, cost-sensitive, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Very affordable pricing
  • Fast response times
  • Good for simple tasks
  • Reasoning capabilities at low cost

Best for:

chatbotscost-sensitivelightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

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